As the U.S. launches strikes against Houthi militants based in Yemen following a vow by the rebels to target American ships, Donald Trump is seeking to put pressure on Iran.
In a Truth Social post on Monday, the president wrote that going forward his administration will consider Houthi acts of aggression against U.S. vessels, interests and allies to be carried out with the direction or support of Iran.
“Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN, and IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!” Trump wrote.
His post Monday followed similar rhetoric leveled over the weekend in the wake of U.S. airstrikes in Yemen, but signified an escalation as it marked the first time the U.S. threatened military retaliation against the Iranian government over actions taken by the Houthis.
The U.S. and western countries have long accused the Iranian government — through its Revolutionary Guard corps (IRGC) — of funding and training the Houthi movement. In recent days, Iranian officials including the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, have sought to put distance between Tehran and the group.
“We have always declared — and we declare again today — that the Yemenis are an independent and free nation in their own land, with an independent national policy,” a top IRGC official, Major General Hossein Salami, said on Sunday.
But the Council on Foreign Relations and other organizations estimate that Iran has supplied the Houthi movement with weapons for a decade, as well as intelligence support and remains one of Tehran’s most important client organizations following the fall of Bashar Al-Assad in Syria.
The Houthi militant group first emerged in the 1990s, and gained control of Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, in 2014. An Al-Qaeda affiliate remains active in the country as well, and the two groups were the targets of an extended Western-backed Saudi-led military campaign that was blamed for accelerating a humanitarian crisis and killing thousands of civilians, while failing to oust the rebels from Sanaa.
“Successive U.S. administrations have failed to stem the flow of Iranian support to the Houthis and the growing Iranian influence over them,” read a 2022 analysis from the center-right American Enterprise Institute (AEI). “The IRGC Quds Force transferred increasingly sophisticated weapons and capabilities to the Houthis during the Trump administration’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Iran.”
The US launched airstrikes on the Houthi-held Yemeni capital of Sanaa early Sunday morning. Local officials claimed most of the dead were civilians, including women and children.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, however, claimed that Yemenis were not even key players in the conflict: “It’s wrong to think about it as we’re bombing Yemen. We’re bombing the Houthis, and they happen to be located in Yemen.”
Iran’s revolutionary guards have vowed to stand up to the Trump administration’s threats, and the country’s supreme leader says that Tehran will not engage in nuclear talks while Washington’s “maximum pressure” campaign remains in effect. The campaign seeks to cut off Iran’s oil exports with the aim of stifling Iran’s nuclear development.
Experts at the Atlantic Council warned over the weekend that Houthi forces may likely also escalate attacks against U.S. interests, including warships stationed in the region — or attempt to push further into territory held by Yemen’s government-in-exile.
“We warn our enemies that Iran will respond decisively and destructively if they take their threats into action,” the IRGC’s Salami said to Iranian state media.